In September 1353, the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, sent word to one of his subjects, a legal scholar named Ibn Battuta, to return home back to Tangiers. It would be the first time Battuta would spend a significant amount of time in his homeland since he had left to go on pilgrimage to Mecca nearly thirty years before in 1325. During that three decade period, Battuta, a well educated Islamic Scholar from a wealthy family, had travelled across the entirety of the Muslim world, and even beyond, to the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople, and even China. During his lifetime, he journeyed across a total of forty modern day counties, a distance of well over 70,000 miles, spending a significant amount of time in every place he visited. He visited Egypt, Arabia, East Africa, Anatolia, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, South East Asia, Spain and even traversed the Saharan Desert to arrive in West Africa before he finally returned home to recant his life story to the scholar Ibn Juzayy, who had been instructed by the Sultan to record the incredible journey for posterity.

Recommended Reading:-The Travels of Ibn Battuta, Ibn BattutaThe Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Peter Francopan

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